


Take It To The Limit

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [21]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Tag to Continuum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, <i>So put me on a highway / And show me a sign / And take it to the limit one more time."</i></p><p>Former USAF chopper pilot John makes friends with Cameron and bonds over football and fast cars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take It To The Limit

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Year That Was](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3060) by bluflamingo. 



The first time he came into the bar, John didn’t give him a second glance, just kept on drinking his beer and watching the football game. But the guy sat down beside him, ordered the same beer, and asked the bartender who was winning.  
  
“Air Force,” Anna said.  
  
“Good.”  
  
And John had to glance over and see who was so decidedly an Air Force fan. The man was about John’s age with blue eyes, short, neat brown hair that would've been regulation, a strong jaw, and broad shoulders beneath his black leather jacket.  
  
“You an Academy fan?” John asked. “Or do you just hate the Citadel that much?”  
  
“Academy fan,” the man said. “Why? You a Citadel fan?” He raised his eyebrows at John, and John had the sense that the man knew John was definitely not a Citadel fan.  
  
“Absolutely,” John said, just to mess with him.  
  
The guy looked startled, then amused, and he shrugged and went back to his beer.  
  
And John forgot all about him.  
  
The next time the guy came into the bar, he was wearing that same black leather jacket, and this time John looked twice, because he hadn’t appreciated the way the man’s shoulders tapered to his narrow hips or - damn. When the guy turned around, John wanted to cheer. Or maybe bounce a quarter off of his ass.  
  
Maybe it had just been too damn long since he’d gotten some.  
  
The guy managed to charm his way into a game of pool with a bunch of frat boys and play well enough to get cheered on but not so much that he upstaged them to the sorority girls they were with. John cringed when the frat boys thanked the ‘old guy’ for a good game, and quickly turned away when the guy took up the bar stool beside John once again.  
  
“Cameron, right?” Anna had a gift for names and faces. She’d been a teacher once.  
  
“Yes ma’am. Anna?” Cameron had a cute little drawl.  
  
“Right in one.” Anna smiled and pushed a bottle across the table. Same beer as John’s. “How’re things at the garage?”  
  
“Fortuitous,” Cameron said. “My sad old Honda finally bit the dust, and today this guy brought in an old Mustang. Hideous shade of yellow, needs a lot of love under the hood, but I think I can make her purr again.”  
  
John had never heard so much innuendo-laden car talk outside of a porn movie, and yet somehow Cameron sounded completely innocently sincere.  
  
“Fortuitous indeed,” Anna said. Then she turned to John. “Need a fresh one?”  
  
“No, thanks.” John smiled and lifted his bottle. “Still got some left.”  
  
“Holler when you want another.” Anna smiled and went to serve a customer down the other end of the bar.  
  
“The Citadel fan,” Cameron said.  
  
“Says the Academy fan. Actually, my name’s John.” He offered a hand.  
  
“Cameron.”  
  
“I haven’t seen you around here,” John said, and whoops, that was dangerously close to _Come here often?_  
  
Cameron shrugged. “Moved in a few months back. Spent the first little while making sure everything with the house and new job was five by five. Now I get to try to have a social life.”  
  
“How’s that going for you?”  
  
“It’s gone worse.” Cameron cast John a significant look before he took a pull from his bottle. “So, Citadel, really?”  
  
“Not really,” John said. “I never went to the Academy, but I was in the Air Force myself.”  
  
“Oh yeah? You one of those flyboys?”  
  
“For some reason, most people don’t count chopper pilots as flyboys,” John said, “but yeah.”  
  
“Not in anymore?”  
  
“Nope. Mustered out.” Honorable discharge, by the skin of his teeth. He’d left corpses in his wake, but he’d been following orders. “Did my twenty.”  
  
Cameron nodded. “Fair enough.”

John released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He always hated it when strangers said  _Thank you for serving._ “So, why are you an Academy fan?”  
  
“My old man was a test pilot,” Cameron said. “What’d you think of the game?”  
  
And just like that, John was having easy conversation again. Football was a safe, innocent topic, but John was pretty sure the veiled looks Cameron kept casting him were anything but innocent. Still, after Cameron was done with his beer, he threw down enough bills to cover the drink and a tip, bade John farewell, and left.

 

  
Somehow, John and Cameron became a regular thing at the bar. They’d sit and talk, share a drink - always only one beer for Cameron - and then they’d go their separate ways, Cam with a small smile that wasn’t quite sad, John left feeling like there was something more that he wasn’t quite getting. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was seeing what he was seeing between them, the way Cam would linger just an instant too long on their farewell handshake, the way he’d look John up and down as John came into the bar. But there wasn’t enough to make a move. John carefully avoided any mention of an ex-wife, and he carefully listened for mention of a significant other, but since he and Cameron always met on a Friday night, he knew there was none.  
  
John had finally resigned himself to their routine of friendly not-quite-flirting when Cameron had to go and shake things up.  
  
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “I finally finished my car. Let’s take it for a spin.”’  
  
Cameron hadn’t been kidding when he’d described the thing as yellow, but it was a sleek classic, and when John climbed into the passenger seat, the interior smelled of leather and oil and made his heart race, like the first time he’d climbed into the cockpit of a chopper. And then Cameron fired up the engine, and it really did purr.  
  
“Let’s go,” Cameron said. He drove to some deserted stretch of highway so old it didn’t even have a number, guiding the car with sure hands (John might have noticed the way Cameron’s hands curled around a beer bottle more than a friend should). Once the dust around them had settled, Cameron glanced across the front seat at John. “You ready?”  
  
“To what?”  
  
Cameron grinned. “To take it to the limit.”  
  
“The speed limit?”  
  
“Yeah right, flyboy.” And Cam floored it.  
  
John hadn’t felt this kind of reckless adrenaline since he was a teenager. He threw his head back and whooped, watched the speedometer climb higher and higher, listened to the gears shift, watched Cameron’s hand curl over the stick shift, felt his pulse climb with the car’s velocity.  
  
And then they were going all out, the night speeding past them in a blur, and it was almost like flying again.  
  
Once the engine topped out, Cameron reined it back in, drew the car to a stop, and they stared at the dust cloud they’d left behind them, breathing hard. Then Cameron cut the engine and handed John the keys.  
  
“Your turn.”  
  
John didn’t hesitate, didn’t even blink, just slid toward the driver’s seat, and there was a moment when their bodies pressed together deliciously, and then they were trading places and John was running his hands over the steering wheel and dash, and yeah, he felt like a teenager all over again. He made sure Cameron was buckled in before he let the engine roar to life, and they were racing across the dirt once more.

Back and forth they went, pushing the car to its limits and beyond, trading places between laps, turning crazy donuts and making dust devils, and during the next exchange, John paused. Instead of sliding into the driver’s seat, he dropped himself into Cameron’s lap, leaned in, and kissed him.  
  
It took some maneuvering, but John got Cameron pressed up against the passenger window, kissing him frantically and pawing at the hem of his shirt, desperate to get under it. Cameron kissed him back, hot and wet and aggressive, and John couldn’t decide if he wanted Cameron on his hands and knees to take him from behind or if he wanted Cameron on top of him and taking him.  
  
“Wait, wait,” Cameron said. “We better go - go somewhere. If the cops catch us -”  
  
“We’ve been going over a hundred miles an hour and you’re worried about the cops catching us now?” John asked.  
  
“Maybe I just want us in a bed,” Cameron said, and the gleam in his eyes told John a bed would make things a thousand times more interesting, so he nodded, pulled back, rearranged his clothes as best as he could, and issued directions to the nearest motel.  
  
The clerk, a college student more interested in his physics textbook than them, surrendered a key with little fuss, and Cameron dragged John to their room, and once they made it inside, John put the pedal to the metal, and they rode each other all night, no brakes.  
  


 

Two decades of military service had given John a built-in alarm clock, and he woke at six sharp, pleasantly sore and achy. Beside him, Cameron was stirring as well.  
  
“Sorry if I woke you,” John said softly.  
  
Cameron smiled sleepily. “Not you, me. Old habits die hard.”  
  
John had been about to say the same thing, but there was a massive thump next door.  
  
Someone yelled, “Turn on the TV!”  
  
John came to full alertness, reached for his pants.  
  
And then someone was pounding on their door.  
  
“Turn on the TV!”  
  
It was the clerk.  
  
“What the hell?” John asked, but Cameron was on his feet, uncaring of his own nakedness, turning on the television.  
  
Every channel was the same: breaking news story, strange aircraft had penetrated American air space, were being pursued by USAF fighter jets.  
  
John stared. He’d never seen anything move like that before. “What the hell are those?”  
  
But Cameron said, gazed shadowed, “They’re here.” He pulled on his clothes at lightning speed. Then he reached out, drew John into a soft kiss, a loving kiss, and John knew it was goodbye.  
  
“I’m so sorry, John,” Cameron said. “I’ve missed you so much.”  
  
And that made no sense, but then Cameron’s cell phone was ringing, and he was saying a whole lot of “Yes, sir,” in the perfect intonation of a man speaking to a superior officer.  
  
“I’ll be right there,” Cameron promised. He pressed the car keys into John’s hand, caught his gaze and held it.  
  
“I know this sounds crazy,” Cameron said, “but I love you.” He kissed John again, the briefest press of lips, and was out the door.  
  
John stared at the keys in his hand and thought it was the somehow the sanest thing he’d ever heard.


End file.
